1-SEG

1-SEG? One-Seg? wansegu?

In Japan the nickname for digital mobile TV is written in Katakana: ワンセグ (pronounced wansegu). Japanese people love to abbreviate – oneseg is short for OneSegment. Why?

The reason is technical: digital TV is broadcast in certain radio frequency channels. Each TV station (e.g. NHK, Fuji-TV, TBS etc) uses one particular 6 MHz wide frequency channel for digital TV broadcasts. Each channel is divided into 14 segments, and one segment is used for digital TV to mobile phones, while the other remaining 12 segments are used for high-definition digital TV, while the 14th segment is used as a buffer between adjacent channels to avoid interference.